


An Unexpected Visitor

by kalypsobean



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Blue Wizard, Fix-It of Sorts, Girl!Wizard, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 16:36:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1517597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Elrond sent scouts to find Radagast in Lord of the Rings, they did not find him. This is why. (Based on what they did to him in The Hobbit movies, but with some book stuff thrown in because it's fun.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Unexpected Visitor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moriwen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moriwen/gifts).



He goes for his sword as soon as he hears footsteps; can't be too careful these days, not with the darkness out there the way it is, infesting everything and killing once it's taken all the life it can to feed its master. No, can't be too careful, have to take care of the little ones, the ones who die from just a touch and have nothing with which to fight, no weapons and no guile. They need him now, more than ever; that's what he was sent for, to please Yavanna and protect her children, the trees and the bushes and the animals that live in them.

A soft blue light glows gently through his window and then between the logs he put up to cover the holes made by the spiders, foul spawn of Ungoliant, no friend to Yavanna, no friend to him. It's the same as before, the feeling of strangeness, of something that doesn't belong, but the fear is gone from it like it drained away, kept somewhere dark and lonely and cold where the cool pure light can't touch.

Spiders don't knock, but he keeps the sword close and Sebastian closer when he peeks through the knothole. 

"Who's there?" he calls. As familiar as this is, it won't do to be reckless, and even the youngest elves can't hide their fëa so completely that it doesn't shine here, where even the tiniest light stands out to be pounced upon and gobbled up.

"Good grief, Aiwendil, has so much time passed that you do not know me from the darkness, I who sailed with you, who fell with you?"

Sebastian turns his nose up, poking his face out of the ball he's been in since he revived, and squeaks. "Yes, I suppose we shall let this one in, shall we?" he says, and opens the door to the light.

Pallando sets aside her staff and the light dims, enough that he can see her without squinting as she sweeps past him, her nose already wrinkling as her eyes dart from this place to that. She was never much for nature, he recalls, seeing her as she was in his mind even as he watches her dust off his best chair with her sleeve. A friend of the hunter, yes indeed, but not one for the hunt itself, she would delight in the feasting and the game, ever so slightly disdainful of the blood still under the keeper's nails and the dirt trodden into Vána's lavish carpets. Such a place as he kept would not be fitting for her, for she sought beauty in all its forms and this darkness only made her own seem more so by contrast, and her distaste was clear.

"I see I do not need to ask how you fare," she says, "for the darkness I fought through to reach you tells me enough."

"It is the Necromancer," he says. He offers her a pipe, a glass, a plate, but she takes nothing.

"I cannot stay in this place," she says, and he remembers the first time she looked at him like that, when she hadn't learned how to tie her long silver hair away from her face and her gaze was filtered through strands that fanned across her face like a mist dulling the intensity of Arda's sun. There is nothing to temper it now; he can see that she is pained by the darkness, that it eats from her the same way it eats from everything under his care, and it is that which she rejects. Her hand is soft as she stills his, and her quiet leeches into his thoughts until the words make sense, they don't repeat and run around in his mind where he can't always catch them. "Neither can you." 

They all had gifts, those who were chosen to sail; Curunír and Olórin had magic both, but Curunír had words with which to sell it and Olórin had strength with which to use it. Alatar was a tracker, the most gifted of Oromë's hunt, and Pallando had been Alatar's, before the love of blood and war festered in him and brought him low, as soon as temptation had been laid before him. Pallando's gift was influence, that given to politicians and manipulators, and she had not been able to stop him, even with her magic and Curunír's aid. She could not take away Alatar's choice, just as she would not take his now; though she could, if she crossed that same line and with the darkness around her, he loves her because she doesn't. "The Greenwood has the Elves to guard her," she says, "but the East lands have no purity left. There are no Shires, none of the highborn to bring the memory of the Trees to succour the dying lands." She shows him, her crystal lighting up the room and her hand always on his, while her memories say what her words can't. He can already see what needs to be done, where the life can still be drawn from decay and what's already there, clinging to the last of the clear air and pure water, unsalted and lifeless, without magic.

"Let Olórin handle things here," she says, and it feels like the right thing, until the darkness seeps back in and she fades back into her human guise, exhausted. He has built a life here, not a grand one, but he has everything he needs and the animals know him as their friend; the darkness came from the East in the night and settled around them all until it became inextricably part of the landscape, and he is all that is holding it back.

"There is a time for great deeds against all odds, and there is a time for quiet deeds which soften the world in readiness for its shaping." She was always wise, always knew his mind, but now her talent for trickery exceeds even his memory of her, for she has spent time bending the minds of Men and knows always what to say. "Come with me," she says, and she doesn't say it's because she's tired of being alone, or because she can't focus on the earth and the Men who finish what the darkness starts for them; he knows enough to know her mind just as well, if not of Men, then of Maiar alone of all the speaking peoples. Perhaps her inclusion in their group was just a whim of Oromë, or maybe the Hunter saw what was in Alatar's heart, but she was never without purpose, even beyond the borders of the Númenórean remnants. 

He did always like her, though she sat near the head of the table and directed their mirthful conversations this way and that, and he always sat near the middle, silently giving thanks to each life that had been given to sustain his bodily form, even before it was mortal and fragile, easy for the darkness to target. The differences between them seem to vanish when he agrees, though with sadness for the lands he has tended for so long. She deigns to help him pack, carefully laying out his potions between his herbs so that the bottles won't break, and Sebastian follows her until she picks him up and balances him on her shoulder; she doesn't complain if he prickles her, or digs his claws in.

He asks to stay for one more night, but she looks at him like that and he daren't push the issue. "I have a perfectly good home in Harad, and a desire to be away from this foul stench."

But the darkness doesn't cling to her, even as it swirls around them as he guides his sled and her staff lights the way for his rabbits. Soon, it doesn't touch him either, and he remembers what it is like to breathe.

 

For a moment, he remembers being on the ship, when they were exploring their mortal forms and she tangled his hair with her hand and told him she liked him best, and then he sees for himself what the East has become. All selfish thoughts flee from the itch in his fëa that wants to join with the land and help it grow from the fire that scourges it, but she laughs as his rabbits fly up and over the sand dunes, and the dust shimmers in the air like a sun-illusion, and he wonders if they are not all the same thing.


End file.
